With the growth and expansion of information technology, communication not only between two more nodes across a network, but also between two or more nodes in single device, and even between two or more nodes on a single chip, circuit or backplane has become ever more important. For example, it is common to provide high-speed communication between devices across a backplane, or chip to chip communications. The backplane may often provide a number of traces or conductors for providing communication paths between different devices or ports.
However, as transmission frequencies continue to increase, frequency dependent transmission losses become a more significant problem for device level communications. This transmission loss can cause greater attenuation of high frequency component of the signals, which may make it difficult for a receiver to correctly interpret or detect the received bits or signals. This may increase the bit error rate.
In addition, cross talk, or electro-magnetic transmissions, from adjacent or nearby channels or communication paths may create interference with transmitted signals. For example, longer transmissions may result in more attenuated (i.e. elongated and weaker) signals being received at a receiving node where energy emissions from adjacent transmissions may also be received. A closer proximity of a channel or receiver to an adjacent transmitter and/or transmission medium may result in a larger volume of adjacent energy emissions, or crosstalk, being received by the receiver. The combination of attenuated signals from longer transmissions and relatively strong energy emissions or crosstalk from adjacent transmissions may result in the receiver having greater difficulty in correctly detecting transmitted signals, and distinguishing transmitted signals from the crosstalk or adjacent interference.
To partially compensate for the attenuation, pre-emphasis or other equalization techniques have been applied to transmitted signals. Unfortunately, many approaches are either typically ad-hoc in nature, or, for example, attempt to solve attenuation, without regard to crosstalk. It may be desirable to address both signal attenuation and crosstalk.